


Handwash Your Delicates

by tb_ll57



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Relationships, Background Slash, Between Books, F/M, M/M, Post - Order of the Phoenix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bill began to finger-comb his hair. He didn’t turn away and he didn’t move toward the door, and so Remus stood in his path not sure when their shower would officially end. Struggling with a tangle behind his head, Bill asked, ‘Was Sirius your lover?’</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005. I was out of the fandom before Rowling finished the series, but I'll go to my grave resisting Remus/Tonks, so. Originally hosted at Sychophant Hex.

When the curtain was pulled back and Bill came into the shower with him, Remus was stricken momentarily speechless.

If Bill discovered that he was in the wrong place, it didn’t show on his face. Remus recovered his presence of mind enough to try and cover himself for privacy.

‘Don’t worry,’ Bill said, the suddenness of his voice in a room that had previously only had the sound of running water in it making Remus jump. The eldest Weasley grinned at him, and lifted a hand into the spray. ‘We’ve got the same bits,’ he added.

This was true. Remus knew it was true because Bill wasn’t trying to cover his. Finally, he managed, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Conserving water.’ Bill ducked his head under the spray, and came out slicking his long hair back. Remus had to press back against the tiles to avoid being touched– it was not a large enough cubicle for two people, even as slender as they both were. The curtain stuck damply to his arm when he moved.

Then Bill sighed. ‘C’mere,’ he said, and put a large hand on Remus’s biceps, drawing him closer. ‘I’ll wash you.’

‘Wash me?’ His voice cracked like an adolescent’s. He was all palpitations since Bill had surprised him and the rapid patter of his heart wasn’t letting up. The touch on his arm was cooler than the water splashing them and he was aware that Bill was taller than him, bigger than him, younger than him. No longer smiling, but still somehow gentle.

‘Yeah.’ They were only inches apart really. Bill backed him under the spray, and Remus flinched as it hit his neck. The other man reached around him, nudging against his back, and turned the spigot until the water ran warmer. ‘How does that feel?’

And then suddenly it was no longer strange and uncomfortably intimate, merely surreal. Remus made a noise somewhere between ‘all right’ and ‘what?’ and stood hunching his shoulders under Bill’s hold, too puzzled even to think.

Then Bill had the shampoo in his hands, and then he was rubbing his palms together to make lather. ‘Head down,’ he instructed calmly, softly. He raised his eyebrows when Remus didn’t obey. ‘Head down,’ he repeated, a little more firmly.

This time Remus did as he was told. The hot spray came down squarely on the back of his neck, relaxing his tense muscles as they stretched. Strong fingers touching his scalp made him jerk, but they didn’t go away. Bill washed his hair briskly, rubbing knuckles over his temples and over his ears; then broadly palmed his head, working in big circles.

‘Head up,’ Bill murmured, and Remus raised his gaze to look at him. He could feel the pads of Bill’s thumbs still massaging the soft spot at the bottom of his skull. Bill’s carved face was a mask of concentration. ‘Close your eyes.’

He balked. Bill didn’t repeat it, only waited, expectation written all over his posture. Remus glanced away, all too readily defeated, and let his eyes close. It was hard, it was frightening, to give up the advantage of sight. As Bill carefully tilted his head back into the spray again, he whispered, ‘I won’t hurt you.’

The hand that balanced carefully at his hairline blocked the fall of suds, and he could sense and smell Bill’s arms held away from his own shoulders, feel his right hand rinsing the scentless shampoo from his hair. He was released, and he opened his eyes immediately.

‘Keep them closed,’ Bill chided. He was soaping his hands now.

‘You’re not done?’

‘You’re not clean yet, are you,’ was the reply. Bill held up long fingers covered in filmy white. ‘It’s really for the best if you keep them closed.’

Obedience was easier this time, though infinitely harder to sustain. The first brush of fingertips over his cheeks made him wince. Bill spread the soap over his face with only the slightest pressure, circling his lips and eyes and tracing his brows. A hand swiped smoothly down Remus’s neck, and then two forefingers attacked his ears from both sides. Remus was startled enough to laugh, and Bill’s rumbling chuckle joined him.

Then the hands came down on his shoulders again, and despite himself he tensed. ‘Turn about,’ Bill told him. ‘I’ve got you.’ Remus shuffled into a turn, and gasped when the spray hit his face, even though he’d expected it. ‘Hold your breath,’ said Bill’s whisper in his ear, and Remus sucked in a lung’s worth of air and stood nervously aware of all of Bill’s weight– not pressed to his back, but right there, and he’d never quite noticed that Bill really was bigger than him. The hands cupping his shoulders seemed improbably huge.

Just when he needed to breathe again Bill turned him about and drew him away from the water. For a moment he was free of touch, and he peeked. Bill had the soap in his hands again. ‘What are you doing?’ Remus asked.

‘I used to bathe the younger kids,’ Bill told him, meeting his look for a moment. ‘Right down to Ginny before I left for Gringott’s. Don’t worry. I might be the closest thing there is to a bathing expert.’

That struck him as funny, but he didn’t quite have the wherewithal to laugh. He managed a breath and a smile before Bill began to lather his chest. Remus said, ‘I’m not a kid.’

‘No,’ Bill agreed. ‘I can see that.’

‘I’m not even a sibling.’

Bill was the one who laughed then. He lifted Remus’s left arm by the wrist and washed it efficiently, and then his right, and then turned him into the spray to rinse as he washed Remus’s back. When his soapy hands would have descended lower, Remus pulled away quickly.

‘I’m not– not that,’ he said.

Bill didn’t press him, only nodded toward the soap. They manoeuvered about each other awkwardly for a moment, each trying to find room for their elbows, til Remus was stood in the corner with the curtain sticking to him again and Bill was washing was his own hair. Remus would have finished sooner, but he watched Bill, still unsure he understood– no, sure that he didn’t– what the other man was doing, why they were somehow here together, in the fourth landing bath of 12 Grimmauld Place.

Bill rescued the soap from Remus’s limp hands and knelt on the tile to wash Remus’s legs, one after the other, even going between Remus’s toes, making him blush. Then Bill reached through the curtain to the toiletries shelf, and came back holding Remus’s toothbrush and the paste.

‘You’re not going to do that too,’ Remus ventured, watching Bill squeeze a small line onto his bristles.

‘This is a full-service salon,’ Bill answered cheerfully. ‘Say "ah."’

It was one of the strangest things Remus had ever allowed anyone to do to him, but Bill stood crushed almost right against him and brushed his teeth for him. One finger of his hand was curved under Remus’s jaw, and the other moved the brush with light pressure over his molars, then his uppers. Remus spat into the drain when he was told to, and then Bill brushed his front teeth, shooting him a little smile of amusement when Remus reddened.

When he was released Remus immediately brought a hand to his mouth to hide the unavoidable dribbles of paste. ‘How do I rinse?’ he mumbled.

Bill gestured to the nozzle, where he was already rinsing the toothbrush. Remus awkwardly opened his mouth to the spray, catching a scant mouthful and getting some up his nose. While he swished the water between his teeth, he watched Bill spread paste on the brush again and use it on himself. The sight made him a little embarrassed, a little intrigued. He’d never shared a toothbrush with anyone, and Bill’s easy presumption puzzled him.

They spat at the same time, and Remus wiped his mouth. Bill grinned as he quickly soaped himself up, and again Remus pressed back to the tile to give him access to the waterfall.

When Bill turned it off, Remus found himself feeling a little lost.

The noise of the curtain rings scraping the rod seemed to scream finality. Bill pulled him out onto the paper bath matt below the showering stall, and took Remus’s towel down from the rack. ‘Head down,’ he ordered once again.

Remus obeyed without delay this time. The blue towel, smelling like previous showers, enveloped his head and cut off his vision even before he closed his eyes. Bill rubbed his hair dry, and then his torso, and finally his legs, and then he wrapped the whole damp cloth about Remus’s shoulders. His own towel– red– was used just as quickly, and then they stood facing each other on the wet matt. Bill’s hair was a ginger bush leaning generally leftward, and Remus squelched an impulse to brush it down.

‘Clean now,’ Bill said.

Belatedly Remus realised that referred to him. ‘Yes,’ he answered. He paused before saying, ‘Are you saying I was dirty before?’

A slow smile spread over Bill’s freckled face. ‘That sounds sort of private to me.’

Remus was amazed to discover he had blushes left. He pulled the towel a little closer about him.

Bill began to finger-comb his hair. He didn’t turn away and he didn’t move toward the door, and so Remus stood in his path not sure when their shower would officially end. Struggling with a tangle behind his head, Bill asked, ‘Was Sirius your lover?’

Remus licked his soap-dried lips. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean– No.’

Bill accepted that with a nod. ‘I just wanted to know. I’d have done this, regardless.’

‘This.’ Remus didn’t know what that meant.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bill added, and now his young face was solemn and his eyes seemed to be saying things that Remus couldn’t decode. ‘That he died. That you lost him again.’

The apology, the condolence, whatever it was, it was like a stabbing pain in his gut. Remus tried to keep his face impassive until it left him– it didn’t, really. ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.

And that was the signal for the end, apparently. Bill smiled a smaller, less personal smile, and when he took a step Remus moved quickly out of his way. Bill opened the door of the bath and stepped out into the hall, finishing the knot in his towel at his waist. Remus turned to watch him go.

But he didn’t. He stood in the corridor, and he looked back at Remus, his mouth moving like he was chewing the inside of his lip. Remus thought that his toothbrush had been there, and wondered if he would get a new one or not.

Bill said, ‘I don’t think you should let yourself forget what it feels like to be touched. Whether Sirius was your lover or not.’

Remus transferred his gaze to his toes, curling a little, bereft in the cold. ‘I do most of my showering alone.’

‘Mmm,’ said Bill, and though he was already turning away when Remus glanced up at him, Remus thought he was smiling. Bill’s footsteps on the stairs leading down to the third floor were confident and easy. Remus’s, heading up to the fifth, were silent and careful. The open door to the fourth landing bath leaked steam, and neither of them looked back.


	2. Two

‘The thing about grief,’ Remus said, ‘the thing about grief is that it ends with letting go.’

Bill’s hand slowed, the toothbrush drooping between his lips as he listened. Their eyes met for a moment in the mirror, and then Bill resumed brushing.

Remus played at his hair. It was almost all silver now. He could remember a time of full and blond, but that was all connected to things like schools unis and holiday formals, Christmas portraits with his grandparents. Now it was silver, and thin on top– a little thin. Remus played with it, parting at the left instead of the right, but it only looked as if he were trying too hard. He was always trying too hard.

‘And if you don’t let it go,’ he said to the mirror, to Bill’s broad and naked back, ‘there’s something wrong with you.’

Bill spat, and rinsed the brush under the faucet. ‘No-one blames you,’ he began quietly.

‘That’s exactly what it is and you know it.’ With a quick thrust of his hand Remus pushed all of his hair back from his forehead and dropped the brush to the toiletries shelf. ‘Even you. Maybe you especially.’

Bill faced him. In the steamy, close space of the fourth landing bath Bill took up all the room, it seemed, being taller than Remus by a hand and with great freckled shoulders an artwork of muscle and bone moving in elegant concert beneath skin the same colour as the creamy bakelite tiles. Just looking at him was feeling out place, feeling concave and creaky and weary.

Bill tapped him on the chest with the toothbrush. Their toothbrush. Remus’s five days a week, Bill’s twice. ‘It’s not–‘ he began.

‘If it’s not true then why do you come here to me?’

The eldest Weasley stood there looking caught out, revealed inescapably to be his mother’s son. Remus wanted to sigh except it would have sounded melodramatic; instead he took the toothbrush, put it in its cup.

‘Thank you,’ he said very politely, ‘and please, let's don't make a scene of this.  I'm really quite done.’

He ought to have been safe as soon as he stepped out of the bath. As soon as he put a bare foot on the stairs leading to the fifth storey he ought to have been alone, secure in the knowledge that not one single person had ever, not even once, followed him into the part of the house he had claimed as his. It should have been inviolable. He had thought it was.

He had thought the same about his showers, though, and Bill had followed him there.

He took eight steps before he felt Bill coming up behind him. Nine more brought him to the fifth storey. And when he turned to glare Bill was still standing there next to him as if it had been absolutely no quandary to go where he wasn’t invited.

‘What else is there about grief, then?’ Bill demanded. ‘Is it walling yourself off until you die, too? Is it secretly hoping that no-one will notice while you starve to death for lack of human company?’

‘Yes,’ Remus said harshly. ‘It’s knowing that no-one can understand because they’re too busy moving on. It’s every well-intentioned gesture withering you just a little bit more. It’s everyone telling you to learn how to swim while you’re already drowning!’

Bill’s neck and ears were red. It was creeping across his cheeks, the flush, and down to the hard planes of his chest, the line of pale hair on his sternum. Remus watched the stain crawl over Bill’s body, and then he turned his back and pushed blindly on his door. He was inside his own room, his own sanctum, his own impregnable space, and Bill was left in the doorway with just enough sense not to follow, this time.

‘You don’t have to drown,’ Bill said, so softly Remus barely heard.

Remus found himself at his bed, looking down at the clothing he’d laid out there before his shower, at the white buttons on the blue shirt, at the worn inner thighs and knees of trousers that might never have been new. To them, old companions that they were, he said, ‘I don’t have to fight it, either.’

Then Bill swore. It was a loud sound. It was an ugly sound, the kind of words that Remus would not have brought into his little room even if he had been in the habit of bringing words there at all. And then Bill was not standing there civilly respecting the threshold but was striding in, all long-legs and clenched biceps and frowning mouth, and he gripped Remus by the shoulder. Skin on skin made him shiver.

‘I thought Sirius wasn’t your lover,’ Bill said. He said it like an order. The tone, the sentence, it produced a laugh somewhere inside of him, and Remus let it out to surprise them both.

‘He wasn’t,’ he said, meeting Bill’s gaze. ‘Regulus was. I presume you know how that ended.’ He moved his shoulder, and Bill’s hand dropped away. ‘This isn’t about Sirius Black or Regulus Black or any of the– of the fucking Black family.’ The swear was clumsy on his tongue but it was pleasantly poisonous on the air. ‘It’s about– about– about being the only one left who was there. Or having Harry Potter look at me like he can’t believe I’m all he’s got, and I can’t blame him for it. It’s not wanting to fight a war because if we lose, everything goes to hell, and if we win, everything already is! It’s– being alone because alone is the only place I can breathe.’

Bill shook his head to deny it, but which part, or all of it, Remus didn’t know.

‘It’s wanting you to come to the shower with me,’ he confessed, his voice as raw as the rest of him. ‘To have you touch me. To want you to– touch more. And being– so thankful that you won’t, that you have Fleur, that you’re young and have too much still ahead of you to think that an old man you’re trying to befriend is afraid to look at you nude in case he starts to want again.’

The long ginger eyelashes fluttered as Bill’s eyes moved beneath them. ‘I didn’t... that is– ‘ The flush was back, this time from shame. ‘I know,’ he admitted in a mumble.

Remus turned away to give him time. He put on his shirt, the shirt that smelled as tired as he felt, but they were both at least clean. And he dropped his towel to the bed to put on his trousers.

Bill stopped him with a hand. A hand with strong tendons and large fingers, a hand on his hip, just below his waist.

‘I knew,’ he repeated.

‘Stop now.’

But it was Bill’s turn. Bill who ought to have been polite like his mother and walk away when the warning was clearly given. ‘What’s so wrong about taking affection when it’s offered? Why does it have to be anything more than that? Why does it have to fix everything? Everything is too big. You have to start with something small. Something you can do. I can do this. I would like to do this.’ His hand moved, to cradle or fondle, and Remus slipped quickly aside. Bill’s expression was all exasperation and frustration. ‘Is this because you think you’re too old for me? I don’t care about your age.’

He had to laugh again. The quiver started in his belly and his throat gave it voice. ‘Thanks,’ he managed to retort, sarcasm heavy in his tone. ‘That was exactly the thing to say.’

‘What can I say that will make you think you have something to live for?’

‘I know everything I have to live for. I’m not trying to die, Bill, damn it all! I’m doing the best I can do to live.’

In the silence between them he put on his trousers. It didn’t help– he still felt naked in front of Bill and suspected he always would. There had been an element of intrigue in that, at first, but Remus couldn’t find it now. It was only exposure. It hadn’t been quite real when it was confined to the fourth landing bath, but it was real now, and given enough time Remus would learn to hate it. He’d probably have to move his bath things to the sixth landing loo that didn’t get enough water pressure.

Bill took him by the shoulders and kissed him.

It was the kiss that was special to the twenty-something male. It was rough when it tried to be tender, a rub of stubble and an alcoholic smell of after-shave, an invasive tongue to disguise the inexperience of the lips. It was a kiss that Remus could remember by the thousands in perfect clarity. And he could remember the feel of fingers pressing into the small of his back like that, not to hold but to– yes, to grip his rear like that. Bill’s thumb found and rubbed his nipple through his shirt. A kiss of too many sensations, a kiss meant to prelude sex, a kiss meant to get him hard fast. He almost wished it had worked.

It worked for Bill. The tenting of the nubby red towel was plenty evidence, the push of it against Remus’s stomach urgent and demanding. Remus pulled away, trying to ease the sting of rejection with an apologetic look that came to him easily, as if he’d ever had the opportunity to practise it.

‘Don’t,’ he admonished, trying to be kindly. ‘Save this for your fiancé.’

‘I don’t see Fleur here,’ Bill growled. It was a growl. It sent a reflexive shiver up Remus’s spine. Bill’s eyes were hot, his hand rubbing over Remus’s buttock, up and down, fingers squeezing. ‘I see you.’

Molly and Arthur had missed some polish with this one, Remus thought. He tried less for kindly and more for accusing, this time. ‘I didn’t say "Stop" because I was still thinking about it, Bill.’

‘You said "Stop" because you’re being a bloody coward.’

‘Who is this for?’ Remus demanded. ‘For me? Or for you? Some last fling before you get married? A fantasy?’

‘It would be if you’d stop howling at me and admit you want it too.’

Maybe there’d been a part of him, after all, that had relished Bill trying selflessly to help him. There was certainly a part of him that felt hurt by what Bill so casually revealed as a weeks-long seduction. And that was probably the same bit of him that felt foolish over blurting out all that poetic-sounding blather about grief, the bit of him writhing in all-too-familiar regret.  What an idiot he was, for making the same mistake over, and over, and yet over again. The rush of humiliation was enough to tank him, but at least it got his dander up, and it was the anger that made him reach back, yank Bill down by the tangled mop of wet hair, and smash their teeth together in a kiss.

Bill kissed him like a twenty-something with an agenda to meet.  Bill probably didn't know it, but Remus met him with the kiss of a forty-something– knowing it would hurt and knowing it would release him, knowing it would be done in half an hour and he’d still have time to finish his report to Dumbledore.  Knowing Bill would be gone from his life by noon, and that chance meetings in the future would only be tense until Bill learnt to pretend it had never happened.

'Bed,' Bill whispered against his lips, and Remus went.


	3. Three

A small cardboard box appeared on the table before Remus.

Remus followed the hand that had placed it there to Bill Weasley’s chest, and from there to Bill Weasley’s frown. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s tea.’ Bill’s hand flattened on the kitchen table, and then he eased his lanky body into the chair directly across from the one Remus occupied.

Remus looked about him automatically for escape; but they were quite alone. The fading, pale light available from the window over the sink told him it was past sunset, and he would most likely be left to fend for himself until morning. Which meant he was stuck with Bill, who had not, as Remus thought he had, gone home with his parents after the Order meeting.

Remus touched the box with a fingertip. He thought of a number of things to say, at least one of which was ‘thank you,’ but what came out of his mouth was, ‘Why?’

‘Because that crap you drink gives you headaches.’ Bill’s eyes were calm when Remus inadvertently met them. ‘This is decaffeinated.’

Remus pursed his lips. ‘How do you know I have headaches? Or that they’re from the tea?’

Bill had long fingers. Everything on him, Remus knew quite personally, was made of long lines and solid spaces. He often had dirt under his fingernails, but today they were clean, the broad plates a healthy pink, the lunulas graceful, creamy half-moons. His hands were as pale as the rest of him, the freckles smaller than on his arms and face, like little pinpricks.

Bill said, ‘Some day you will admit that you see me watching you.’

He felt himself colour as easily as a school-girl. ‘So,’ he returned drily, ‘will others.’

‘I don’t care.’

That wasn’t precisely true, and Remus knew it. Maybe their solitude in the vast emptiness of 12 Grimmauld Place owed something to what had grown between them, but it owed just as much to the fact that people didn’t go about announcing that they showered together.

Not that they had. Not for nearly three weeks.

The hand on the table twitched, an impatient little squirm of the fingers. Bill added, ‘You’re avoiding me.’

Granted they were alone, and granted that Remus had been doing his best to avoid such a circumstance for almost three weeks, Remus still said, ‘I’m not avoiding you.’

‘Oh? Then I shouldn’t think anything about you moving your things out of the fourth landing bath? I shouldn’t make anything of you never being home when I come by? I shouldn’t worry that the notes I left you mysteriously disappeared, unanswered?’

Remus fixed his gaze on the curtains, gently swaying in the remnants of a fall breeze. ‘I don’t think you know what you want,’ he answered finally, barely loud enough to hear himself. ‘I think you only believe that you do. And I can’t help but feel that it’s incredibly unfair.’

He knew without looking that Bill was stung by that. ‘And you?’ the younger man demanded. ‘You think you’ve got all the answers? You know exactly what you want?’

A laugh bubbled up in him. ‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ he admitted wearily. He put his hands under the seat of the chair and lifted while he pushed it back, so that the chair moved silently but for a gentle thunk on the floorboards when he set it down again. ‘I’m tired, Bill,’ he said. ‘I want to lie down and read for a while.’

Bill was less graceful in scrambling to his feet. ‘But–‘

‘Good night. Please excuse me not walking you to the door.’

‘Don’t just– Remus!’ Bill moved fast and clamped a hand around his elbow. Remus did not resist, though he wondered at his battered resolve as he let Bill back him into the pantry doors. The dig of an old-fashioned lever handle into the small of his back prevented him from moving any further. But Bill didn’t trap him there with anything more violent than the threat of his presence. He left a respectable distance between them, kept his broad hands at his flanks. Then Bill shook his head, hard and angry. ‘If I thought I could fuck some sense into you without mucking it up, I would,’ he muttered.

‘You’re getting married,’ Remus said, the same protest he’d had before, and wished it didn’t sound so flimsy.

‘Do you insist on bringing that up because it really bothers you or because you think it ought to?’

‘I think it ought to bother you.’

‘That part of it _is_ between Fleur and me.’ Bill’s gaze was unwavering. ‘The part I want you to accept is that the existence of a Fleur and me does not cancel out the existence of a _you_ and me.’

Remus wanted to look away, but Bill was big and broad and filled his vision. He settled for the little carved buttons on Bill’s waistcoat, milky bits of ivory shaped as bars. ‘What–‘ He had to pause to clear his throat. ‘What is this you and me?’

‘It’s not messed up. It’s not broken. You don’t have to try and fix it, Remus. It’s not your job to fix everything.’ Bill touched him, a little fluttering touch, and dropped his hand. ‘Why can’t you just accept it?’

‘Because I don’t understand it, Bill!’ He pushed with the flat of his hand, and Bill rocked back a step. ‘This is too– too strange, too different, and maybe I’m...’ He rested his head against the pantry door, and closed his eyes against the sight of Bill’s hurt expression. ‘I remember being your age,’ he managed, trying to be careful and not inflict any undue pain. ‘I remember wanting to do the impossible, to do the hard things and do them right. Bill– Bill, it isn’t your job to save me.’

He heard the shuffle of dragon-hide boots on oak boards. He heard the aimless brush of hands against trousers. He heard the steady, useless beat of his heart.

‘I don’t want,’ Bill said, ‘for you to drown. And I think that what’s keeping you underwater is the weight of all the people you’ve got holding you there.’ He took Remus by the forearms, holding him still when he would have tried to slip away. ‘Sirius Black,’ he said grimly. ‘James and Lily Potter. Regulus. Pettigrew. And those are just the names I know.’

‘Stop,’ Remus warned.

‘Do you know who you are without them attached to you? Does anyone else know?’

‘I said stop, Bill!’

‘What, are you going to tell me I’m wrong?’

Oh, the smug certainty he saw in Bill’s freckled young face. If it weren't so ludicrous it would have brought him to tears. He'd been that young once, probably, but at Bill's age he'd already known what it was to break and still not end. His determination not to be cruel faded in a rush, and he welcomed the dizzy swirl of temper that came inrushing with a deep breath. He shook off Bill’s hold and put his hands on Bill's hard chest, and showed just a bit of the strength he was always so careful to leash. Bill took a stumbling fall, hitting the kitchen table, saved only by a quick catch. ‘It’s a nice thesis,’ Remus mocked. ‘But it’s flawed. You give me far too much credit, Mr Weasley. The truth of it is that they’re all dead and I’m not, but I’m not grieving for them. I’m grieving for me. Because _I’m_ stuck rotting in this house like a prisoner. Because they left me to pick up all the pieces they couldn’t be bothered about. They left their war on my breakfast plate. They left me their children and their ghosts and their problems.’

Bill took the next step away of his own volition. He looked surprised, dimly shocked. Feeling ruthless and glad for it, Remus let the lid off words that had been pressing on his chest since the day he’d watched Sirius fall into the Veil and left him behind to hold Harry back.

‘Do you think it’s so easy to escape this pile of bodies I’m buried under? You were right about one thing. They hold me down. I can barely breathe around them. It’s always Remus-and-James. Remus-and-Sirius. Remus-and-the-old-days. I can’t even have a sentence to myself. I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who has ever looked at me and seen just me. And I am beyond tired of it all. I’m sick of sharing myself with their memories. I’m not a martyr, Bill, I’m selfish, and I want to wallow in it.’

Bill’s mouth moved. It opened once, then closed. When it opened again, nothing came out. Then, finally, he spoke in a small voice. ‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Please go home,’ Remus told him. ‘Please.’

‘I don’t– I’m not sure I believe you.’

‘It’s the truth,’ he said, wishing he didn’t suddenly want to be gentle. So much for his resolve. One quick shout and he was worn to the bone. No, it was better this way. Hadn’t he always wished that someone had told him the truth when he’d been young enough for it to make a difference? ‘I know it’s ugly. But that’s what makes it true.’

A moment stretched into a minute, and he was sure that Bill would deny it all, defy him and try to recapture that misguided romantic notion he’d built. But that minute became two, and Bill said nothing.

At three, Remus repeated, ‘Go home,’ as gently as he’d ever said anything in his life.

Bill went.

The window showed only darkness. It was night now, and the kitchen lamps were low and golden. Remus would have left them there and climbed the many flights to his bed, but he remembered the box on the table, and thought it might be best if no-one else found it.

He brought it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled like a red. When he flipped the lid, he read 'Rooibos.' He touched the fine loose leaves with a fingertip, and breathed in the sharp, clean smell of sandalwood. It was, he realised, just how Bill smelled.

 

**

 

Remus let a gasp escape him when the curtain wrenched back. Bill Weasley stood there, his legs getting splashed by the spray, his nappy red towel wrapped around his taut waist.

‘Knew you’d have to shower someday,’ he said complacently.

The soap dropped from Remus’s limp hand. It slid between Bill’s long toes. Bill tossed his towel onto the sink, and stepped into the cubicle. It was instinct to back away and give him room, to keep inches between them. Bill tested the water, and then, without asking, he turned up the heat, just as he always did. Soon steam began to rise about them.

‘Bill,’ Remus said, ‘what are you doing here?’

Bill lifted his left hand, and Remus saw his– their– toothbrush in it. ‘Exactly what I want to be doing,’ he answered.

A man could fling up his hands, but there were no kind gods to strike him deaf and blind and free him from dealing with a problem he'd created. ‘I don’t understand,’ he protested, quite ineffectually, as Bill nudged him around and positioned him under the spray like a puppet. ‘Nothing’s changed since last week. You can’t just waltz in here and make everything fine by wishing, that’s not how the world works. I’m not going to throw myself at you because you’re young and pretty and idealistic–‘

‘Those sound like some good reasons to do exactly that,’ Bill interrupted. He spread paste on the brush, and when Remus opened his mouth to say more, stuck the brush between his jaws. ‘Shut up and listen for a moment, will you?’

Remus surprised himself, and shut up. It was surreal. That was the only word to describe it. Bill grinned a little at him, a rueful smile that showed pearly teeth. He paused to wet his hair, then slicked it back and wiped his face. Remus, watching and dazed, saw uncertainty beneath the boldness for the first time. He took the toothbrush from his mouth, and he waited.

‘Last month,’ Bill said, mumbled really, with the water pounding softly between them, ‘I didn’t start this so I could shower with Sirius Black. Or James Potter. I wanted to be in here with you. I realise now that it– must seem grossly naive to you. Maybe it is, I don’t know anymore. And you’re right about me and Fleur. Maybe it should bother me more that I’m– but like I said before, that’s between me and her.’ He exhaled sharply. ‘Have you ever just thought– if I don’t do this thing, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life?’

‘Oh, Bill,’ Remus said. ‘Of course I have. Everyone does.’

Bill had very pale eyes. They barely left an impression of colour at all; they were an icy blue, almost grey, and they were little-boy eyes now, filled with doubt and questions and hope. He said, simple and straightforward, ‘You’re alone here and you don’t have to be. And when I look at you, I just think, I want to do something about that. I wanted to be your friend. I’m sorry I did it wrong and made it worse.’

He just managed to make what he felt into a laugh. ‘You didn’t make it worse,’ he told the young man tenderly. With only a moment of hesitation, he held out his hand, and Bill took it in his larger one. They stood like that, hammered by the hot water and naked and awkward. ‘I just don’t know what happens from here,’ Remus confessed softly.

Bill shrugged one shoulder. ‘Me neither.’ Reassured now, some of his old confidence was returning. The smile hovered at the edges of his mouth. ‘But you won’t kick me out of your bath until we’ve figured what it is?’

When Bill’s mouth touched his, Remus had the strangest feeling that their kiss had changed. If Remus was a fool- oh, and he was very much a fool- he at least had this. There was nothing urgent between them now, nothing demanding– it was like the kiss of someone who had done a lot of growing up. He wondered which one of them had done the growing. 

And then Bill bent and retrieved the soap from the floor, and offered to wash his back.


End file.
